MARK TWAIN

Madame Marches! said she had a grand-opera voice—
"Marvelous voice" was one of her expressions. Madame
Blanche said her voice was competent for the part of
Els a and Elizabeth in Lohengrin and Tannhauser; and
later she added Isolde to this list—which was the equiva-
lent of saying it was competent for any soprano part

She went home to live on a hill—as commanded by
these great teachers, valleys being forbidden—and gather
vigor of body. Then to go back to Paris and prepare for
the stage (opera).

Her voice was not only eloquent with feeling, but of
almost (particularly after she got to Hartford) unexam-
pled power and volume.

Bryn Mawr began it. It was there that her health was
undermined.

Elmira, Aug. 24. Susy is dead and buried.
We stand stunned as before a space where an appar-
ently strong house has stood five minutes ago—now swept
away by a cyclone—not a vestige left.

She was perfectly happy in Venice with her mother and
Jean—Clara and I in America. She lived in the gondola
all the time.

She was sensitive to everything. The palmist (lady at a
party) told her she would have an unhappy life and that
with all her gifts she would fall just short of success. She
would be a failure. It distressed her for days.

Susy became blind through the suffusion of blood on
the brain and said to Charles Langdon "I am blind, Uncle
Charlie, and you are blind."

She was so glad and proud to see "Pudd'nhead" on the
stage. She took such interest in all my work—and I miss
her so—and half the incentive is gone.

Those words touched her so: "And will you no come
back again." I said the pathos was in the "no"—-it
wouldn't be as effective in English.
I seem like poor old Aaron Burr, standing in the midst

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